SEO and site revenue tips

1. Use “h1” tags with meaningful keywords at least at the start of every page. Avoid things like “Welcome to my site”.

2. Use “strong” tags to emphasize key words and phrases.

3. Use meaningful and unique “title” tags on all of your pages. Avoid using keywords that are not relevan to your page.

4. Use a CSS style sheet to include the font and design information of your site. This both cuts down the size of your pages, and also makes it easier to update.

5. Break long pages into around 300 words.

6. Regularly check for and fix broken links. There are plenty of free tools available that can help do this.

7. Aim to add at least one page of new content each day.

8. Grow the size of your site by adding search engine friendly comment sections and forums. Let other people help build the content of your site.

9. Use search engine friendly URLs where possible. Some people suggest cutting down or removing subdirectories all together. For example www.mysite.com/key-word-key-word/

10. Use meaningful and descriptive “alt” and “title” tags on all pictures on your site. There are a surprising large number of people who turn off graphics on websites. Also search engines use these for indexing pictures.

11. Use meaningful descriptions on all of your outgoing links. For example rather than writing click here for more information“, write: click here for more information on refinancing your loan.

12. Be liberal with your use of outgoing links. Some people, think that outgoing links “drain” your PR and have a negative affect on your site, but I believe good search engines will value your site higher for providing useful information for your readers.

13. Try to use a clean and simple design with easily to read colors and fonts. Only use flash if you are using it to display some kind of graphical information or a presentation. Fewer people are impressed by flash sites these days.

14. Make sure your site has an RSS feed. Search engines are using RSS feeds more and more to index sites.

15. Request and encourage user feedback to your site.

16. Publish testimonials to your site. Ask people for permission to use their comments, and use psydonyms if necessary. Avoid making up your own testimonials. Adding any negative feedback will help build your site’s credibility.

17. Create a new feature, product, info section, mini-site about your website and send out a press release to the media. There are some sites which have a free service and others have paid service.

18. Offer a free article, e-book or product on your site. There is nothing better than offering something which they can get for “free” to entice people to your website. If you offer a product like an e-book, be sure to your site’s address in the header or footer to your site. Also mention your site with links to specific pages, so people then have another reason to go back to your site.

19. Create a place for people to sign up for an receive a newsletter.

20. Offer a live chat area on your site people can ask questions in real-time.

21. Register your domain for at least 5 years in advance. Not only does this ensure that you won’t forget to renew your domain name every year, there is evidence that search engines use this data to distinguish quality websites.

22. Register a proper domain, rather than relying on free hosting, using a sub-domain of the free host.

23. Create a Yahoo and Google account and customize your homepage to include the RSS of your own site’s feed. Some people have had success with this to get their site indexed by Google and Yahoo.

24. Create accounts at services like delicious and create links to your sites. Also use it to see what kind of people are linking to your site and what pages they are linking to.

25. Study your site’s logs, especially the referrers to see both who is linking to your site and what they are linking to. The possibilities of checking this could help if you have an affiliate program and you may also be able to offer the company advertising on your site.

26. Create an FAQ page and add to it everytime you answer an FAQ type question by email.

27. Occassionally update old content on the site.

28. Avoid “buying traffic”, or participating in “traffic exchanges” from those companies that frequently advertise on the Internet.

29. Never send unsolicitied mail.

30. Consider using Google Adwords or similar program to promote a new product or section of your site.

31. Establish partnerships with related websites.

32. Never do anything to harm your competitors, rather attempt to seek ways to work together in mutually benificial partnership.

33. Make business cards with your site’s URL.

34. Have an ‘About Me’ page which decribes you and/or your company.

35. Consider adding a ‘disclaimer’ to your site.

36. Make it clear that people can buy advertising on your site.

37. Make a logo and use it on your site and business cards.

38. Make postcards with your site information on it and leave them in restaurants.

39. Make stickers with your site address and hand them out to your friends and family.

40. Write articles and allow other websites to use your articles for free, as long as they include a link back to your site.

41. Submit your site to the larger and smaller search engines.

42. Leave thoughtful and interesting comments on related blogs.

43. Include your site address in the signature of your email.

44. When registering a domain consider creating a non-keyword domain. Think of successful companies like Google, Godaddy and Yahoo.

45. Seek partnerships with people who have knowledge, experience, writing ability, but do not have have web development experience.

46. Strongly consider implementing a well known CMS for ease of use site maintenance and adding updates.

47. Try doing a stunt or gimmick that people might blog about or link to.

48. Jump onto the latest marketing bandwagon.

49. No matter crazy your idea is register a domain for it, create at least one page of content and monitor how it performs.

50. Register all of the .net .org and .biz for your domain if you can affort to.

51. Unless you can see totally no value in domain do not let any expire.

52. Make some products with your logo on it using a service such as cafepress.

53. Read magazines/publications related to your site. Send an email to the author of the article telling them something potentially usesful and also mention your website.

54. Interview key people in your industry, authors, webmasters. Include the interview as a podcast and also transcribe it.

55. Write to related government authorities asking them for information and or pictures which you can use on your site.

56. Make sure any books/movies/prroducts include an affiliate link to something like Amazon.

57. Look at what affiliates your competitors are using and give them a try if you think they could be successful.

58. Drop any non-peforming affiliates. Try to build a core group affiliates that both convert well and pay in a timely manner.

59. If you have a site that is locally based consider distributing flyers.

60. Attempt to try and and create a single general, high traffic site which you can then feed to smaller niche sites.

61. If you ever wrote essays at high-school or university consider pulling them out of the closet and putting them on to a new site.

62. Make sure you know exactly where your visitors are coming from and which pages they are most interested in.

63. Set your screen saver or desktop with the phrase, “Content is king”.

64. Some days are good and some days are slow. Try not to get discouraged if it is taking time. Adding, good, quality content over time is the key.

65. Search engines like new content. Adding too much new content too quick could possibly be a problem. Think of the storey of the tortoise and the hare, “slow and stead wins the race”.

66. Don’t be afraid of taking a break. Actually getting away from your PC can sometimes be the best way to reflect on what you are doing and to come up with new ideas and strategies.

67. Re-read everything you write before you hit the “publish” button, better yet ask a friend to read over your writing. Spell checkers can only go so far.

69. Use meta tags in all of your pages, with relevant keywords and page description. Search engines may not giving them as much weight as they use to, but there is always the possiblity that a new search engine may use them again some time in the future.

70. Use keywords throughout your text, at the same time trying not to “overuse” them to create increhonsible text.

71. For competitive keywords, target two or three word combinations.

72. Use Overture’s key word tools to find approximately how many times a month a word is searched on More searches means more potential traffic, but it can also mean that the keyword is more comptetive.

74. Develop sites that you have an interest in. You do not necessarily have to be an expert field, you can even take the approach of a learning beginneer.

75. Be careful who you tell about what you are doing. I really want to say, tell the whole world about how you are making money on the internet, but if you are working for a company you need to be careful, as many companies these days are strict about allowing their employees to earn outside income. You could also be breaching your company’s NDA. Well meaning friends and family might also click on your ads, to try and help you out, which could also see you banned from the Google Adsense program.

76. With regards to the above in mind, you may know people in your industry who could be well placed to help spread the word about your site.

77. Make sure you include a “tell a friend” script in your site.

78. Enhance your site by adding sripts or features, such as a classifieds section to help drive traffic to your site.

79. Possibly include news feeds to your site to give it a dynamic feel.

80. Encourage friends, family and spouses to “get on the web”. Don’t push them but help them out if they are interestd. Consider buying a friend a domain for their birthday.

81. If you include products on your site, write a review of the product or service on your site in your own words. Publishers or manufactures may send you are a free sample to review. Include both the positive and negative features of the product. Your readers will reward you with their honesty. Avoid recommending something you didn’t like or haven’t tried yourself.

82. Diversify your sites if possible. If you have a site about skiing, consider also having a summer sports site like surfing, to balance the drop in traffic and drop in revenue during the off season. Keep in mind also the difference in seasons in the north and southern hemisphere.

83. Think about your geographic location of your target audience. Smaller geo-graphic target, results in lower traffic, but it can give you the opportunity to dominate your niche in that particular location.

84. On the other hand, if your current site is a local one, consider how you could expand it to make it globablly focused.

85. Consider adding additional languages to your site. Avoid computer generated langauge pages. Either pay someone or ask a friend to help with the translations.

86. Approach businesses to see if they might be interested in “sponsoring” a page or section of your site.

87. Consider making websites for free for local business, using possibly a subdomain from your own site.

88. Travel. For me personally, I get so many ideas while travelling. Travelling